


It Hurts Too Much to be Anything Else

by its_just_us_here



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Bisexual!Spencer, M/M, Pining!Spencer, Unrequited Love, autistic!spencer, idk i suck at thinking of appropriate tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/its_just_us_here/pseuds/its_just_us_here
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*LOTS of S11 spoilers!* Given recent CM events, uh, basically this is a really long headcannon about how Spencer is tragically in love with Derek, who does not reciprocate his feelings. A ~behind the scenes~ of s11, I guess? Sorry, my summaries are The. Literal. Worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Hurts Too Much to be Anything Else

**Author's Note:**

> S11 spoilers! Despite always knowing it would be the case, I'm nonetheless devastated that Moreid will never be official. I will grudgingly accept/convince myself that Spencer-forever-pining-for-Derek is cannon, while continuing to shamelessly live my life in happy Spencer/Derek fan fics.
> 
> Also just to be clear, even tho the autistic!Spencer part is not a huge part of the story -- I write Spencer as autistic bc I am personally autistic (plus, you know, the fact that he is obviously, objectively autistic). I know that I feel anxious when non-autistic ppl write autistic characters, so just thought I'd add this note in case anyone was similarly nervous?

The first time Derek mentioned Savannah, Spencer felt his stomach drop. He hoped that the disappointment wasn’t too obvious on his face as his best friend told him, practically giddy, about the woman who lived down the hall from him. Derek’s eyes were shining in a way that Spencer loved to see, but was possessive of: That sparkle was usually reserved for him, for private conversations and passionate hugs and shameless flirting. When Spencer finally saw Derek and Savannah together, he had to turn away, faking a cough, trying not to throw up or burst into tears. Spencer was documenting Derek’s body language, the obvious chemistry: Pupils dilated, Derek reaching for her hand. Spencer knew. His window of opportunity had closed.

Years later, Spencer could recall in stunning detail the precise moment he knew Derek Morgan was in love with Savannah Hayes. It was because of his eidetic memory, sure. But it was also because he could recall in equally stunning detail the precise moment he knew that _he_ was in love with Derek Morgan. It was in that elevator, almost ten years ago; the exact moment it stopped, Spencer _knew_. He felt panicked, but somehow safe. His memory raced through statistics on elevator-related deaths and injuries but for perhaps the first time in his life, he let emotion overcome reason as he thought to himself, _Derek won’t let anything bad happen to me_. As the elevator lurched, Spencer caught a whiff of Derek’s scent, felt a pull in his stomach, a desire to seize the moment to just lean in and feel his body close to Derek’s; and, subsequently, abject fear that he was about to show his hand, that if he were trapped too long in a tiny box then he’d say something wrong. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than Derek finding out how he felt. Spencer was sure that the older agent would be not only uninterested, but repulsed. Their friendship wouldn’t survive it. When Derek teasingly asked if he was scared, Spencer couldn’t utter anything but the truth: “I just don’t want to be trapped in an elevator with you, to be honest.”

Since that moment, Spencer’s love for Derek had never faltered, and he lived a painful existence of unrequited love coupled with false hope. See, Spencer was never one to pick up on subtle social cues, but he had never met a human being more flirtatious than Derek Morgan. Spencer feigned ignorance when he was teased about his autistic leanings, but only because he was scared of the stigma associated with that label - he had known, since the very first time he encountered a definition of autism - that he could check every diagnostic box. He learned to get by using conversational scripts, and read voraciously about human behavior so that he could better navigate social situations. It’s why he went into profiling: It wasn’t just academic interest or a noble desire to save lives, but a survival tool.

And what all of his reading led him to believe was this: That Derek Morgan must, surely, reciprocate his feelings. For starters, Derek touched him literally all the time, and it was not normal friendly touching. There was the time that Derek gently patted his stomach out in the field; the time Derek gently cupped his face during a baseball pep talk; all the times Derek ran his fingers through Spencer’s hair; the hugs - ohmygod - the hugs. And the hugs usually went with the heart-to-hearts. Spencer was _sure_ that normal, heterosexual men in normal platonic relationships _most definitely_ did not talk about emotions as much as he did with Derek. Derek always knew when Spencer’s head was somewhere else, always chased him down and forced him to explain, always listened so patiently, never cringed when Spencer started to cry. And in turn, Spencer was one of the only people Derek ever opened up to, sharing the pain he felt from past bullying, from his father’s death, from his sexual abuse.

For a decade, Spencer’s mind carefully catalogued and archived the evidence that Derek had feelings for him. Taken all together, it formed a rather persuasive argument. But Spencer had no idea how to communicate his feelings, and the risk that he was wrong and that it could devastate their friendship was a convincing reason to pine from afar. He watched Derek take women home for years, never getting serious, and methodically added that to the “Derek Morgan” file in his brain. _Maybe he refuses to settle down because he’s waiting for me_ , he thought to himself, instantly chiding himself for being so foolish, but still craving the escape into his fantasy. It was a constant push and pull. Every time Derek touched him, smiled at him, confided in him, Spencer felt a pang of hope in his core; but after so many years with nothing concrete, Spencer felt an equal twinge of disappointment.

The tension between optimism and defeat lasted for nearly seven years before Spencer decided he should give it a shot with someone else. He had been talking to this geneticist about his headaches, and he couldn’t deny his overwhelming intellectual attraction to her. It was rare that he got to meet a mind whose capabilities matched his own, and their conversations were so stimulating that he couldn’t help but develop feelings for her: a desire to talk to her, all the time, to feel the ways that she pushed him to think about things differently. She made him _better_ . She made him a better person, and she made him better at his job. He never wanted to let that go, and so he did his best to talk himself into believing that _that_ feeling, whatever it was, was a romantic feeling.

He knew deep down that it wasn’t the same. He was attracted to Maeve because of the attributes they shared, but he was attracted to Derek because of the attributes that complemented his own. In situations where Spencer was timid, Derek was confident. In situations where Spencer overanalyzed, Derek just _felt_. They balanced each other out in a way that Spencer was sure he wouldn’t find with anyone else. When Maeve died, the trauma was real, and Spencer was broken, his grief genuine. But there was the teeniest, tiniest part of him that didn’t grieve Maeve as a person, but rather the possibility of a life where he wasn’t hopelessly in love with his best friend.

When he saw Derek and Savannah, though, it crushed him. She had joined the team for a night out after getting home from a case. When she walked in, when Derek put his arms around her… In a single moment he felt his world collapsing. Despite his best efforts, he knew right then that his hopes had been sky high, that he had been patiently waiting for his best friend for ten years, that he had let himself believe in this fantasy. It had fueled him. To have it all taken away in a single moment was completely devastating. He became suddenly filled with self-loathing, genuinely hating himself for having been so foolish as to believe that someone like Derek would ever even notice him. He mentally checked out of the conversation, nodding and smiling at the right times, and staying only as long as he needed to for no one to notice how badly he was hurting. Eventually he excused himself early, citing the need to catch the 10:04 train before they switched to the night schedule. Finally alone in his apartment, he cried so hard he threw up, and eventually lulled himself to sleep in front of Dr. Who, desperately trying to think about something else.

The next day he resolved that he’d move on. A clear demarcation between his previous life, in love with his best friend, and his future, free of such frivolous daydreams. He filled his time outside of work with books and guest lectures and movies and theatre and museums, never stopped moving for months on end. He spent less and less time with Derek and it became easier to repress his feelings, until a whirlwind of events changed everything.

It started when his mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He didn’t tell anyone on the team, not even (especially not) Derek. It was the kind of thing that Old Spencer would’ve told Derek in confidence, just between the two of them. He probably would’ve cried, and Derek probably would’ve hugged him, lingering just a little bit too long for it to be normal, and Spencer would’ve been set back five or six steps in his Derek-Morgan-12-Step-Program. But then it all came out during a case, Derek listening the whole time. They walked home together and when Derek invited him inside, Spencer knew immediately that he needed to put as much physical space between himself and the home that Derek shared with Savannah as soon as possible. He politely declined and did his best to walk away before he bared his soul to a person who would never return his feelings. Before he had a chance, Derek had to go and be Derek, pulling him back in. “Hey, Kid. Can I tell you something?” Spencer’s heart beat too fast. There was a pause just long enough for Spencer to imagine Derek saying the words he’d been wanting to hear for so long.

It wasn’t that, though. Spencer knew it wasn’t going to be that and stopped himself before his hopes could be crushed again. Derek pulled him in for a hug: slowly, deliberately. And Spencer melted right into him, burrowing into his shoulder, intensely craving his touch. Derek couldn’t find the words he wanted. “I just, um.” Spencer didn’t want to hear anything other than what he wanted to hear, and cut him off. “Yeah.” The tears came despite his best efforts, kicking himself when his voice cracked. When Derek pulled away, Spencer all but fled the scene, needing to not be staring into Derek’s incredibly kind, open face.

A few months went by before Derek’s abduction. Spencer was able to distract himself by thinking of it all abstractly, just another case, a puzzle to solve, a mission. But after saving Derek, ushering him into the ambulance, sitting in the hospital waiting room (because sitting by his bedside was too much)... Spencer felt like he had been kicked in the stomach, like his chest was going to burst open, like Derek was something that was going to be taken from him over, and over, and over again and he had no option but to just live with it. Derek was unconscious for three days and Spencer didn’t leave the hospital once. When Garcia came out and tearfully announced to him that Derek had woken up, Spencer nodded mutely, picked up his messenger bag, and calmly exited the hospital to finally pass out in his own bed.

At home, Spencer took stock of his emotions. Garcia texted not long after that Derek and Savannah were engaged. _This is it. This is my life. This is the rest of my life_ , he concluded. For ten years he had been in love with Derek Morgan, and it hurt, and it was awful, but he had survived it. It was tragic to never get to kiss the one you love, but his life had nevertheless been full; he had friends, he had a family in his BAU teammates, he was proud of his work. It wasn’t working to repress his feelings for Derek and he was left with no option but to endure them.

He was grateful that Derek’s wedding was haphazard and last minute, and that he and Garcia were co-best-men. There wasn’t a long, drawn-out wedding planning phase where Spencer had to relentlessly pretend to be happy about his friend’s union to someone else. Rather, it was just a few weeks, and Derek had insisted, earnestly, in the midst of his physical and emotional recovery that he wanted to forego many typical traditions. No bachelor party, no frills. Just a ceremony and a small, low-key reception. As the wedding came together, Spencer willingly let Garcia take the lead; he’d show up to, but mostly remain silent, when they got together to hash out details. During the ceremony, Spencer stood stoically at Derek’s side, thankful that the tears streaming down his face could be interpreted as happy ones. He stayed at the reception through the first few dances before pulling Derek aside, mumbling some congratulations, and pretending to sheepishly confide that he was having one of his headaches, and could Derek not make a big deal about it in front of the team? He felt guilt overcome him as Derek tried to provide comfort and telling him that of course he didn’t mind if Spencer snuck out early. Spencer went home and didn’t sleep at all that night, instead reading nine books and trying to block out idle thoughts of syringes and Dilaudid.

Six months later, Derek was back at work. They were working on a bizarre case involving a clearly talented but deranged hourglass maker. Spencer volunteered to spend hours combing through stacks and stacks of paper files in the office to avoid being paired up with Derek in the field. But when he saw his best friend staring into the distance, obviously distracted, Spencer felt the pain so strongly himself that he had to intervene. Part of being in love is caring about the other person’s well being above your own. Spencer approached him and skillfully lied, reassuring Derek that he and Savannah would be great parents, that their team was making the world safer.

Spencer didn’t even have a chance to adjust to the new normal of working with a married Derek before it was disrupted again. Derek arrived back from his first case and immediately afterwards, Savannah was shot in the hospital parking lot. Spencer had no time to think or process his emotions. Just like when he pulled up the chair in that police station on the case, Spencer felt the similar tug of knowing that loving Derek meant wanting to see him happy, even if it wasn’t with him. With more urgency than he had ever worked a case, Spencer racked his brain for clues, and ultimately was the one to make the connection that the man who had hurt Derek and Savannah was in one of Derek’s rental homes. This intel brought him back safely: Brought Derek back to his wife, his baby boy. His baby boy: Hank Spencer Morgan. Seeing Derek so happy, Spencer’s emotions instinctually matched it, hugging Derek in the hospital hallway so hard they almost fell over. _This is it. This is my life._ Spencer decided then and there that if he had the privilege of witnessing Derek so full of joy, then maybe he could survive.

On Derek’s last day at the BAU, Spencer was a mess. He knew Derek was making his goodbye rounds and started crying in the conference room before it was even his turn. Spencer was crying for everything he was losing: His closest coworker, his confidante, his best friend, his desire to intimately share his life with another human being. The past several months had been such a roller coaster of trauma and celebration, and Spencer knew with utmost certainty that the feelings would never go away. There was no one to replace Derek. Spencer was grieving the chance of ever having a partner, because the only one he wanted was starting a family with someone else: Spencer would be alone, for the rest of his life. When Derek took Spencer in his arms and tenderly whispered, “I love you, Kid,” Spencer felt butterflies for the briefest moment before returning to reality, weighted down by defeat. He pulled Derek closer, knowing that was the closest he’d ever get.


End file.
